Coffee Art: China & Thailand

I have been wanting to write again about coffee for some time now since it is a big part of my everyday life thanks to all of you back home! At the same time, I have some great pictures - one of them my friend Andrea has already displayed on her blog - of coffee that I have been drinking over the last few months and I thought I would share you some of the wonderful works of art that I have tasted.

So I must state that drinking coffee from China - and East Asia for that matter - is very different from what you might think of when drinking coffee back home. Having come from Washington - the land of Starbucks and numerous other small coffee chains - it hard not to come in with expectations of what coffee IS and what it ISN'T. Not to mention that I worked for Starbucks for a small amount of time.

At the same time, I have come to enjoy learning about how the Chinese view coffee and how they prepare it. Below are some pictures and descriptions of the coffee I have tasted thus far.

(Above: Cold Mocha & Irish Coffee)

First off, a Mocha isn't always what you would necessarily think of if you ordered it in Nanchang. I am still not exactly sure what they do, but I think they use some spin-off of a French press method to make the coffee and then mix it with a milk-like substance (most likely rice milk). Afterward, they add cold water (?) and put whip cream (apparently homemade) on top.

The Irish Coffee is definitely an interesting drink to order. The waiter brings out a Bunsen burner along with the coffee and melts what would appear to be the Irish cream (?) powder into the coffee and lights the liquid on the top of the coffee on fire. So yeah, it's definitely worth ordering to watch, but not that tasty.

(Mocha)

Strangely enough, this mocha did have steamed milk and a really fancy design on the top. On the downside, it was lacking any semblance of chocolate and tasted much more like a latte.

(Cappuccino)

Not really, but the place we go to thinks that they make cappuccinos. Actually, it is some form of coffee mixed with whip cream. The picture above is from the time we went to Dio and it happened to be Valentine's Day and they were making the cappuccinos with 'Love' written with cinnamon powder. It's kind of impressive really. I mean the 'o' in "Love" is even in the shape of the heart - who doesn't like that? : )

(Shannon holding a huge French fry next to a latte)

Since Shannon and I are the coffee junkies around here, we often end up hanging out a lot. This time we decided to order French fries - an odd match for drinking coffee in the morning to be sure - and one of the fries was a big as the latte, which was impressive since it was like 6 inches or so long. Plus, I just had to include because of Shannon's expression.

The latte - I should note - that you are looking at above is divided into two substances as you can already see. Oh yes, and that is a cold latte - whatever that means. The top part of the latte is coffee, while the bottom is most likely rice milk. It is topped off with whip cream, pieces of orange, and mint.

（Mocha in Thailand)

This is perhaps one of the coolest coffee designs I have ever seen. I mean, it's not every day you see a cat in your coffee. *smile*

Hope you enjoyed the pictures! Laters!

Breaking in Our Kitchen American Style

Well, the last two weeks or so have flown by and I must admit that hopes and plans of blogging have all been dashed until now.

Making Hamburgers: Chinese Style (sort of...)

The other week - I can't remember precisely now - my roommate and I decided to make hamburgers for our fellow coworkers who were mostly Chinese, but did include our amazing friend Takao (Japanese teacher) and Ern (Philippino), who is our fellow English teacher in arms. Making a hamburger is no easy thing though, and definitely takes some research - in food that is. *smile*

You see, China isn't really the bastion of hamburgers, let alone ample supplies of beef (牛肉). So finding ground beef actually DOES TAKE RESEARCH in that you have to find it. Once you do that, you are still left with the difficulty of locating something that resembles a bun and doesn't taste like most Chinese bread. Not that there is anything against Chinese bread, but the Chinese definitely like their bread a little sweeter than most Americans. Cultural Note: However, if you were to tell that to a Chinese person that they like sweet bread, they might not believe you, because according to all Chinese, they don't like "sweet foods". Continuing on, these are you two greatest obstacles to making a hamburger in China, and unfortunately, are quite substantial obstacles to overcome in the making of hamburgers. I mean, you just can't make a hamburger without beef and buns - come on.

So, needless to say, I managed to stumble upon ground beef while on a random trip to Walmart and promptly bought - unknowingly - 5.5 lbs of beef. For some reasons, I had the conversions all mixed up in my head and had thought I had bought about 2 lbs. Of course, that doesn't account for how I didn't figure out the weight difference between 2lbs and 5.5lbs when carrying it away. I also found ketchup, which I also picked up - plus it was really cheap. After showing Jonathan my amazing discovery, we made a trip to Metro (German equivalent of a Winco) later that week and found bun like bread, and also managed to find some seasoning for the patties.

Setting a date, we invited our friends over for hamburgers - a special treat for them since: (1) real American hamburgers don't exist, unless you count McDonalds - which I don't; and (2) many of them had never eaten a real hamburger. Our friend Henry Huang, showed up early as he was very eager to learn how to make American hamburgers and always seems genuinely excited to hangout with us. (Henry is about in his mid 40's and teaching advanced English) He helped us make the patties, put on the seasoning, and intently watched every movement that Jonathan did in making the hamburgers. It was actually quite entertaining to find some one so interested in making hamburgers. It would appear that most Chinese find making hamburgers a rather significant feat requiring some one without substantial knowledge in cooking. However, if I am invovled in such a cooking process we all know that that could never be true!

We completed the hamburgers just in time as the rest of our guests showed up. Our friend Ern didn't show up, but was replaced by a coworker of our friend Stephen named Lynn, and filled in quite well. The hambugers - surprisingly - tasted similar to something that we might eat back home off the grill, and were - all around - a success without guests who ate them with delight. Our small Japanese friend Takao managed to pack 2 significant size hamburgers away without difficulty faster than Jonathan or I could. I was actually kind of taken aback by how fast they disappeared, because I thought he had just eaten 1, but had managed to eat 2 by the time that I started my 2nd.

That weekend actually was the 1st time that Jonathan and I had ever cooked food in our apartment since we arrived here last September. I guess we broke our kitchen in with style though, as we made hamburgers 3 nights in a row completely wiping out all our precious ground beef for: (1) testing (Friday) - the night before we invited our Chinese friends; (2) dinner (Saturday) for our Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino colleagues; and lastly (3) team dinner (Sunday).